passing angels
by owedbetter
Summary: "It was always going to be like this. Both of us knew that." (tw: major character death. POTENTIAL S9 SPOILERS.)


**A/N:** As you can see, I'm taking the news of Clara leaving really well (though, as of writing this, neither Jenna nor the BBC have confirmed anything; this is very heavy speculation and basically my ideal vision of how she'd depart from the show). Aka I am heartbroken beyond reason. I feel like part of my soul has just died. But I'll remember her for the rest of my life and love her twice as long. Clara Oswald means so much to me and it hurts so much but I've always known that this is just how it has to be. And it's okay. It'll be okay, I know that. But for now, feel my pain and cry with me.

* * *

" _Pass on your way, then, with a smiling face, under the smile of him who bids you go_."

Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_

* * *

Orange as a post-apocalyptic wasteland with blue, blue cloudless skies like a child's ideal – if you looked at it just right, it was like the world had ended. Not a soul in sight for miles and miles.

She could hold the whole mountain range in the palm of her hand from this distance. People who came into Edie's Diner were far and few in between. She could have sold it off and let them build who knows what on these grounds but this was her ma's place, God rest her soul, and Oz Oswald would be damned if she let it go for something as trivial and fleeting as wanderlust.

Those things never lasted and dreams were made for sleeping – and with good reason.

Besides, it wasn't too bad. You could get used to a view like that (though she wouldn't have minded other ones, mind you). Sometimes, really queer folk came through those doors and they were interesting enough to remember. Queer as in unique – or the other kind; she wasn't judging that. (Still figuring that out about herself and— _bloody hell_ , your thoughts could get away from you when you're alone.) But anyway, it was a good life. A quiet one with a bit of fun noise every now and then.

Like that red headed angry Scottish lady and the good looking beaky one just a few weeks ago – that was a rare sight.

Wonders to behold, these weary travelers who wander into her diner for sanctuary – what else could she ask for? It wasn't too bad, right? This, she thought for the umpteenth time as she stared into that same picturesque distance.

Oz sighed – chin, propped up against the back of her hand; elbow, against the countertop – and shrugged her shoulders. Stanley, the cook, had an open comic book resting on his face and was fast asleep by the oven. Bella, the only other waitress, was sat right in front of the electric fan and busied herself with the day's crossword puzzle. Just another day, then.

It was then that the ceiling fan started shaking – just a little bit, not enough for panic to occur. In fact, Oz was certain that she was the only one to have noticed it. Her brows knit as she glared up at it. Maybe she imagined it but she was also almost certain that she heard it squeaking. No, that wasn't quite the right word. Screeching, more like. It could not break; the cost would send her completely over budget for at least two quarters. So caught with observing the almost-defiant ceiling fan was she that she didn't notice the sudden appearance of a blue box just a short distance away from her diner. Only when the bell rang was she then woken from her one-sided trance.

In came a man who looked like he'd seen better days. His hair shined like a bad day's silver lining. The smile was mere muscle memory at this point.

"Hiya," she greeted.

In return, he just looked at her. Never had the phrase "piercing stare" ever been more appropriate. He had a guitar and a frayed shoulder bag slung around his shoulders. He said nothing but when he looked at her like that, she thought she might have done something wrong. You didn't just look at someone like that without reason. He turned his head, as if trying to decide on whether or not he should come in properly or not.

She raised her brows at him, not quite knowing what to say to the sudden entrance.

How he even got there, she didn't know. There was no sound of a motorbike or a car or a truck or anything. There was that wheezing, groaning sound that she was certain had come from her ceiling fan somehow so that couldn't have been it. There wasn't a hint of a method of transport from out there but he didn't look like he'd just trudged through the heat of a desert for a few miles on foot. He was disturbingly pale; like all the life had been drained out of him but he was condemned to keep going.

There was nothing else out there but the barely distinct blue police box that nobody has ever quite seen before. In fact, she was convinced that it was a figment of her imagination, that box. She had brief memories of maybe seeing one just a few weeks ago but of that memory, she could not be certain.

Bella wasn't too bothered as she spared but a glance at either of them before she went back to her puzzle. Stanley was still none the wiser in the kitchen. The stranger settled himself to a booth. Oz approached him, spiral notebook out (for mere show at this point), and still offered her standard brand of aggressive cheer.

"Welcome to Edie's Diner, what can I get you?"

"What would _you_ like?" he asked – he sounded like he was chewing marbles.

She quirked her brows at hearing his accent but didn't comment on it. Instead, a corner of her lip curved to a bit of a smirk.

"To take your order, hotshot," she quipped. "But if you want a recommendation, you can't go wrong with our standard milkshake and cheeseburger combo. Family recipe. Won't find any better in a 12 mile radius."

"Okay."

He looked up at her with the saddest eyes she has ever seen. If she didn't know any better, she'd pin that look as _longing_. He had a way about him – like he was a spring, coiled and wound up to its breaking point, just about ready to burst. Like he was dying to say something that was just at the tip of his tongue but had had his tongue ripped out long ago and wasn't able to. He was an odd sort of fellow but he wasn't one with a lascivious stare who looked at her like she was a piece of meat in a tight blue dress so she wasn't exactly one to complain about his melancholy nature. A sad Scotsman. Never served one of those before.

"That your order, then?" she clarified.

He nodded once, pursed his lips, and looked away.

She rang his order up – to which Stanley practically fell off his chair at her sudden boisterous holler – and in a few seconds came the sweet sizzling sound of meat on an oiled grill. She prepared the milkshake herself – a bit more quickly than usual, perhaps (she had questions, she wanted decent conversation – it'd go along much faster if she could get this out of the way) – and the _ding!_ of the bell came just as she was pouring in the milkshake into the glass. She didn't know it but he stole glances at her the whole while. He bit his nails and palmed his cheek over and over again. His leg shook; it could not stop shaking. And she didn't know it – or maybe she did – but his hearts broke every time he looked at her. And he couldn't stop looking at her.

Oz returned to the sad Scotsman's table in record time.

"Bit of a slow day today," she said as she placed his order in front of him. She sat on top of the table beside the food that he simply glanced at before he just looked at her the way a devout might his chosen deity, in complete worship. Not that she would say that aloud or would she ever confess that his look made the hair at the back of her neck stand on end.

"You in a band or something?" was her first question. It went unanswered.

"Traveling musician?" Again, he said nothing. He only looked to his food. His feet shuffled beneath the table as he thought to himself that he has just made a terrible mistake – a pudding brain's sentimental mistake. Oz huffed and cleared her throat.

"Look, man, if you want me to get up and go, just say—"

"No," he said much too quickly.

"I'm sorry?"

Her eyes still did that thing – that too wide, _up-to-here_ thing, he thought. It hurt his hearts to look.

"No, I don't want you to go," he said, more truth in the statement than this version of her would ever know.

"Okay?"

She crossed her arms against her chest as she looked this way and that. Her mind whirred with segues into conversation; she often did this on very, very slow days but would then get a single customer in. Milk out as much company she could get out of them before they were on their wayward path once more to God knows where.

"I'm writing a song," he said, breaking the ice. "I'm _trying_ to write a song."

He sounded far away just then, she decided, and it called to her. She didn't know who he was. She knew nothing about him, apart from what she could see. But something deep inside her could understand the sadness that he wore so plainly on his sleeve. She might call it grief – and it was, if she knew any better. And deep down, she knew she was. She always knew, after all. That was her thing.

Her rigidly kept shoulders dropped as she regarded him. The stranger licked his lips and tapped his fingers restlessly against the smooth, glossy surface of the guitar. Oz considered him for a moment before she could think of something appropriate to reply.

"Is it a sad song?" she asked; her voice, quiet.

"Nothing's sad 'til it's over," he swallowed as the pause that settled sounded like the silence of passing angels, "then everything is."

"What's it called?"

"I think it's called Clara."

"Tell me about her."

He couldn't. So he took his guitar into his hands and played his last confession.

X X X

"I think she always knew, you know."

There were tears in her eyes and it seemed ridiculous that that was what was registering in his big, superior, stupid Time Lord brain. But she was crying – Clara was crying. Clara hardly ever cried and it was that part of this scene that he noticed most of all.

Then again, it was impossible to forget the sound that rang throughout his TARDIS. The cloister bell – each ring sounding weaker and weaker than the last; the old girl couldn't take much more as she fought the hold of the void that seemed hell bent into consuming them to the vast eternal nothingness of the time before Time began.

Sparks flew from the side of the console. She held the monitor to her and the signs showed the levels of life support that was the only thing left that kept the pair of them alive – until even the TARDIS could not take any more. The old girl was dying, still fighting to keep them alive. And he hated himself for giving her the idea.

"Clara, no—!"

"It wasn't because she didn't like me but because she needs me to save her. Save you one last time. She _knew_."

 _The Eye of Harmony, in the most elementary of terms, needed a top up in order to escape._

 _They had been careless – though he would go on to say, for the rest of his life, that it was him alone who had been careless. And she had only ever been perfect. Brave and funny and perfect in every way._

' _But a burst that powerful would need—' he'd said, stopping himself before he could continue._

' _Would need what?!' she demanded._

' _Enough psychic energy that could power up a sun,' he said as he rubbed his palm against his lips in all his frustration. He hit the console with strong, closed fists. She stared at him for a moment as she looked at the light slowly fading away from the console. Her fingers brushed against the telepathic circuits and it sucked her in. A voice wheezed in her mind – barely there, struggling to break dimension barriers to get just one word across – in the exact beat of the cloister bell's rhythm._

 _Akhaten, it said. Clara understood and nodded._

 _Sparks flew then as she took her hand back – a small explosion from the TARDIS that sent him tumbling towards the staircases._

 _When he tried to run back, Clara had set the controls to generate the force field that surrounded just the circumference of the main piloting structure – a trick he'd taught her after the zombie creatures incident; a way to keep herself safe from the TARDIS, if ever needed ever again. He'd never thought she could ever use it against him._

 _That they could ever use it against him. For him._

"Clara, please—"

"It was always going to be like this. Both of us knew that."

She faced him. Tears streamed down her cheeks as he punched the force field to no avail. The energy required to do this would sap the TARDIS of even more precious, limited energy than it had but it revved and held on to give them this.

"Clara—" he pleaded. The Doctor hit the force field until the skin on his closed fists grew angry and red. He hit with all of his strength but his two best girls conspired against him – betrayed him – to save him. After all, Clara Oswald had learned from the best.

He hit it again and again and again.

"Clara!"

"This way I'll always be with you now, don't you get it?" she approached the edge of the force field and faced him. Her bulging eyes gleamed with emotions; he did not understand how they were so many things all at once.

Happy.

Sad.

Brave.

Afraid.

Peaceful.

"Don't even argue," she said as she tried on a small, teary smile.

"Don't do this, please!" _Don't do this to me_ was what he wanted to say but the words were caught in his throat; still now, he could not say them. Not a day will go by when he doesn't wish that he did. Did something different. But she heard it; she knew.

"Tell me another way," she said. A bluff, perhaps, but there was part of her that wished he would come up with something. Clara Oswald did not want to die, after all. A last minute clever thing, the way he always did, she prayed. _Something spectacular._ But he already had, she just wouldn't let him go through with it. And so came her challenge. "Go on."

"I can regenerate, you can't—" he howled. His voice was rough. His hearts had never quite beat as frantically as they had at that moment, he believed. And never had it hurt so much to be alive.

"You don't know how many you've got, you said so yourself!" she countered. "Psychic energy, you said. Psychometry. There's nothing left to power us up and that's how it worked with the leaf in Akhaten; you don't get to choose how much you give. _It's all or nothing!_ "

"Just let me—"

"Not going to happen. I'm right and she knows I'm right and for once, Doctor, we know better than you."

The Doctor gawked at her – his mouth hung open, his eyes bulged – and he wanted to take her away. He should have never asked her to come back. He should have left her there that Christmas, years ago now in her time, and let her live the rest of her life in peace. He could not move though his knees shook, his hands itched to do something more worthwhile than punch and hit at the impenetrable force field, especially when the TARDIS herself was in compliance to this betrayal.

They were taking everything from him, the pair of them. They were betraying him. His hearts broke.

She turned her back to him and saw the readings on the monitor. The TARDIS didn't have much longer. She put in the coordinates and pulled the lever.

"Clara, listen—!"

"I've done the living without you bit, Doctor, and I'll be damned if I have to go through that again."

With the numbers set, in the most elementary of terms, all it needed was the key to get the engine going. Clara went back to him and he hadn't stopped hitting the force field even though he knew that the task was Sisyphean. She rested her hand against the force field and shushed him gently.

"Okay. Okay, this is what's going to happen. I'm going to do this—"

"No!"

"Doctor, shut up and for once, let me decide how I go!" she yelled as she hit the force field back. She was still crying and she was close enough to him then that she realised that he was crying too. She opened her fist and let her fingers rest opposite his own; he did the same.

"Just give me this once, _please_ ," she continued. Pleaded. His hearts were caught in his throat but before he could say anything again, she licked her lips and gave her last orders. "This is what you're going to do, okay? One, you're not going to blame yourself. Don't you bloody dare. This is _my_ choice."

"Clara, please…" he begged, his forehead against the field as he looked down to her. She moved her hand to where it might have rest against his cheek, were they not separated by the field.

"Two, you're going to keep going. Get a new playmate. I'll pick someone nice once I'm in there if I can. Don't know how this whole thing works yet. But you're going to have great adventures—you'll be brilliant, they will be too. You're going to love them; I'll make sure of it."

She was smiling. He could only shake his head. They both wished they could hold the other's hand but the time for that has long since passed.

"Three, you're going to miss me. A lot. Sometimes twice a day." He didn't know why she laughed at that but she did. Another tear rolled down her cheeks as she did. "But only for five minutes. Other than that, you'd better get the hell on with it."

"Clara…" he started. His voice not breaking so much as it was already broken. He wanted to sink to his knees and make this entire nightmare go away but this was no dream. This truth was far too terrible to be a dream. But if this was the end, he needed to say it. It might even make her change her mind.

"Clara, I—"

"I know," she told him. Her eyes shone with all the tears she will never cry and her mouth smiled its last. And she knew what he was going to say, of course she did. She has known it in his every embrace, in his every glance, and in every undeserved second chance that he gave to her – and she gave him all of that back as best she could. In those last glory years of the Doctor and Clara Oswald on the TARDIS, she gave him as much as she could give and he gave her twice as much. Though those words were promised to another, she has always known how she felt about him. And he knew; she knew that he did.

Still, she added, "I do too."

They lingered in that second of peace together – just for a moment. A final kindness. A silence like passing angels; have they come to gift her with her wings?

The cloister bell rang once more – louder than the others, perhaps the TARDIS' final shout. She swallowed and pressed her lips together. She made no effort to hide the tears anymore; her last moments with him will have no veils or lies. The ground beneath them shook as the old girl was very nearly out of power.

 _Just see me,_ she remembered him saying once and so she thought: _Well, look at me now._

"There's not much time left. She can't hold on much longer."

"Please—"

"I'll still be here," she whispered with a caress against the field; meant for his cheek, yes, and if he concentrated, he could almost feel her. "I'll still be with you. All my billions and billions of unlived days, letting you keep going. My eternity for you. Can't think of a better way to go."

"Don't go," he begged one last time. "Please don't go."

"I have to," she replied. Those big, sad, brown eyes of hers were looking up at him for the last time. "It's okay," she added. "And I'm sorry, Doctor. I'm so, so sorry."

A beat more and she was gone. He tried to yell but she had already made her choice. He punched at the force field again – more powerful, more adamant, and more desperate than before.

"Don't watch," she said but he did not obey.

Clara put her trembling fingers into the telepathic circuits and they started to glow. He watched her – too stunned to move now – as it started from her fingertips. He kept yelling her name – an endless mantra, a desperate prayer. Fleck by impossible, golden fleck, she started to disappear before his very eyes. Her eyes looked to the light of the console, breathless, as it grew brighter and brighter. She spared him once last faraway look as the light was just about too brilliant to look upon – but even then, he could see that she was smiling at him.

 _Bright Clara. Brilliant Clara. Beautiful Clara. Brave Clara._

The motors came to life as the rotors above her spun. The engines started and the ground beneath him shook. He stumbled and held onto the railing as the TARDIS dematerialised away from the void as its Eye of Harmony has been newly and impossibly replenished. And just before he lost consciousness, he heard her voice just one last time. He could almost feel her breath against his ear – warm and alive – but he didn't know if that was actually, properly her or not. But he knew what he heard as she gave him one last command.

"Remember me, you clever boy. _Now run._ "

X X X

The song called Clara ended and you could hear a pin drop in the diner.

Oz rested a hand against her heart. She looked at him – those big, sad, brown eyes of hers that he would never, ever forget – and tears ran down her cheeks. Her heart hurt – and not just in a metaphorical sense. It clenched in the hollow of her chest and it felt heavy. Poetically, it wanted to cry out to him. He placed the guitar to the empty seat beside him.

"You didn't have to play that for me," she said quietly as she lifted her hand (a curled finger as its lead) to wipe her tears away.

"I just—" _wanted you to know._ "Needed someone to hear it."

"That was beautiful."

"It was a confession."

"You must have loved her very much."

"Present tense," he told her. It looked like there were nebulae in his eyes – brilliant swirls of shining blues and greys and greens. They glistened with tears as well but he spoke on, in rare truths from this liar's mouth. Because she deserved the truth – in any way that he could tell her. "I never stop. With any of them. All of them."

"Them?"

"All the ones I've lost before. But Clara—she's always been with me, I don't—"

"She's still with you," she said; conviction, strong in the way she said it. But still her voice was quiet; tone, like a mother's lullaby. Oz rested the hand that was against her heart to the back of his. She smiled with pressed lips and spoke with a brand of kindness that he craved. Clara's kindness. Clara's compassion. Clara's chosen selflessness. _Clara, Clara, Clara._ "As long as you remember her, she's there."

"That's what she told me to do."

"Then you'd better do as you're told."

Her thumb caressed the back of his hand and she gave it two pats before she took her hand back. The both of them were still – as was most of everything in the diner. Stanley and Bella were watching them now but The Doctor and Oz paid them no mind.

"What's your name?" he asked after a moment.

"Oz," she answered, "like the Wizard of."

"And this place," he started, "your mother owned it, right?"

"How'd you know?"

 _That_ certainly took her aback.

"Why won't you sell it?" he cocked his head.

"'Cause it's not for sale," she replied. "Plus, I made a promise."

"Don't you want to get out?" he asked. "Travel?"

"Doesn't matter," she said. She shrugged her shoulders.

"What you want to do matters."

"What I want is to do right by my ma, mister."

"Doctor."

"Doctor?"

"My name."

"That's not a name."

"It's mine."

"Okay, sure, but doctor _who_?"

"I always did love it when—" _you said that,_ he wanted to say but didn't. "People say that out loud."

"You're weird," she told him but she grinned to show that it was merely in jest.

"You should do right by you too, you know. Maybe take a vacation. A long one."

"One day, sure."

"Okay," he said. A beat followed. He swallowed. "I'm going to go now."

"Will I ever see you again?"

 _In another life_ , he wanted to say. But didn't.

He smiled for her, though. He slipped out of the booth and slung the guitar around his shoulders as he rose.

The food she'd laid in front of him was all but forgotten. She would not notice the slip of paper he managed to place beneath the plate – a receipt of a hefty sum of money he'd placed in a bank account that was in her name. Let her have that vacation; give her the break, the life she deserved; that all of her deserved. He owed her so much more than that; he owed her so much _better_ than that. But this, he could give. As little and seemingly inconsequential, in comparison to everything else, but it was something.

"I'll remember you," was all the Doctor said. "I promise."

"Clever boy," Oz smiled at that and then nodded. She put her hands on her hips as she gestured for him to go out the door with a jerk of her head. "Now run."


End file.
